


Dying Fires

by forlornopes



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Also a little Carmilla/Ell, And Dean & Carmilla, And Eldritch Guppy, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-09
Updated: 2015-02-09
Packaged: 2018-03-11 05:30:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3315965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forlornopes/pseuds/forlornopes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A voice wrapped in light so blinding that it overshadows all hope tells her how it will end, and she believes it.</p>
<p>Ell has a conversation with Carmilla's mother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dying Fires

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not a history or mythology buff so several liberties were taken with it here. One minor liberty was taken that forced me to rate this T. A little bit of novella referencing. Mostly Dean stuff. I like the Dean. “What an asshole, though,” muttered Ell, speaking her only line of the entire fic before floating off somewhere.

 

 

*

 

You needn't be alarmed, dear. Your safety is no longer a concern as it is most assuredly abolished and in the most intimate ways never existed at all. There is no reason to fear for your life ever again.

 

It must appear frightfully dark in here to you. The blindfold can't be of much aid in that respect, but trust, the truths that its removal would reveal are far more bleak and daunting than any starless night that a mortal can imagine. Please, don't mistake the care taken in abducting you and concealing your surroundings as consideration of what may cross your precious little mind should you learn the truth of your circumstances. No, my sole intent is to deprive my darling daughter of any hope of locating our hallowed abode, should she so desire. We'll see. _I'll_ see, rather.

 

_Who is my daughter?_ You don't recognize my voice? I'm not so sure that I believe you. This voice has made rags of men's undergarments the world over at a mere whisper in the ear. It once sent your heart racing with the promise of a wonderful new friend. Perhaps you should reconsider your words, else tempt me with the whim of making myself unforgettable.

 

Ah, yes! Carmilla, of course. I expected for you to sort it out, if only for the proximity of my sweet girl to your every waking moment and perhaps alongside in the land of dreams as well, hm? She ought be your foremost thought for all occasions, even one so dreadful as this. That is, after all, my dutiful daughter's forte.

 

Why, she has _everything_ to do with this. _Ohoho!_ I've done nothing to her. My... how brave. But stalwart words have no value when they can be undone by damning verisimilitude. And soon, everything about you will be undone like so many broken vows that have shaped this world.

 

Come. Come here, come with me. You may take my hand. Don't slip, child. My patience is very nearly vexed by you, and the sight of your pretty white dress trailing exquisitely about as you fall away into the abyss might better capture my fancy. There we are – steady yourself. Release my hand. _Now_.

 

Pay no mind to those sounds, dear. You've arrived unannounced at supper and it would be quite ill-bred of you, indeed, to comment on the palatability of our meals. I concede that they can be confoundingly noisome, but then your kind has no taste for such a symphony when you feast on your petty game carcasses, do you? No, no. Brutality is a vestige of the past for such a civilized creature as you. Certainly not a horror sewn into very the fabric of reality itself. Would you surmise that your love, Carmilla, feels the same?

 

...I marvel at the talent of that girl. How she manages to restrain herself from bouts of laughter when she looks you in the face, I cannot fathom. Were she so gentle as you contend, she would not have siphoned the life from several of your peers in the lands surrounding that desolate shack which you call a home. I have bore witness to my daughter slaughtering all manner of beasts – sheep, horses, men. A jest! She's killed innumerable women compared to those of the male persuasion. That bland little tart, Bertha, why, it would barely be an exaggeration to say that she threw herself at my beautiful girl's feet. ...Did you entertain the thought that you were the only one? Do you entertain any thoughts at all?

 

Oh my, tears were not my objective in relating to you that intelligence. I don't speak from a place of ignorance on matters of the heart, child, nor of most other matters. I am in fact of considerable sophistication and venerability, in spite of what my countenance and figure would belie. You may be astonished to learn that I was once a steadfast believer in those immaterial fantasies which mortals tell themselves are of greater consequence than the weight of their bones. Perhaps further astonished were we better acquainted, but that was not meant to be.

 

_Ohoho_ , you'll discover the answer to that query soon enough. Though I suppose we have some time to dally. My daughter will not go forth without you; her disenchanted nature will not allow unmindful reconsideration. And yet she doesn't know me as well as I do her nor half so well as she thinks she does – I dare say scarcely as well as you can from beneath that veil. However, her comprehension of my character far surpasses the limited awareness of _Carmilla_ that you delude yourself into treasuring. But _don't we all_   have our veils... Would you like to hear a story as we walk?

 

That unremarkable English education of yours has doubtless exposed you to lore of the ancient Italians of classical antiquity. When I was a youth, they taught us of gods and goddesses who tore at each other for scraps of earth and trivial occupancy in the prayers of human beings. It's laughable now, but aren't most notions from childhood when illuminated by strife and experience? Mm? No opinion on the matter? I'd expect not.

 

My father, like yours, was a man of consequence; a man well-versed in combat and comfortable with power, death and glory. It was considered an immense honor to him and to my family the day that I was led away by hand to my induction into a revered collegium of a once young and auspicious empire. There were but a handful of us, all charged with a sacred duty, a few girls from my city and two from a long-obliterated place formerly nestled in the Alban Hills.

 

Don't lag behind, child. We've quite a ways to go and you mustn't forget that your dearheart Carmilla is waiting for you far above, beneath the moonlight. Excitement abounds when next you meet; take comfort in that truth.

 

As I mentioned, I am no stranger to matters of the heart. I was scant years older than you when first you dreamt of my sly daughter, when I became smitten with one of the girls from the Hills. I recall that she seemed so wise and behaved with such kindness in my guileless eyes. I would follow her everywhere; for years, until I was of an age not far off from how I appear to you now. Time is a treacherous fiend and can make pebbles of mountains or overpowering love of silly infatuation. In my case, it was both.

 

Hm, can you feel its presence already? That hum of unease is not in your imagination, dear. But I'm afraid that you must endure suspense for a ways longer. Cherish these moments.

 

It was a time of war and morale was of utmost import to our soldiers and the king. Any transgression resulted in dire retribution for those of us sworn to my order, who were idolized as the ambassadors of the gods and advocates of the body politic. We were the lifeblood of the people... and their supposed downfall, should we ever stray from our obligation. I will be gracious in presuming that even one as sheltered as yourself can comprehend why a certain indiscretion would have been quite the scandal. One morning just past dawn, I was observed unawares by an unwitting foreign handmaiden. She was lost, unseen behind a statue of Minerva, and spectator to me on the temple floor with my head beneath my beloved Alban girl's white tunic, the ribbons in my hair signifying my vows tangled between her fingers.

 

Am I carrying on, dear? Your pace has slowed. Or perhaps it's the laborious realization of the ordeal that you've blundered into tightening up your nerves? If it's any consolation, you will be the only living person to ever return to the surface after having seen what you're soon to behold.

 

Charging right ahead, my father was a man of greater standing than the father of the woman whom I loved, so she was buried alive in a deep hole in the ground near one of the city gates and died there. My name was diligently omitted from all official accounts of the incident. It would have been unseemly to inter us both when the citizenry needed all of the confidence that the state could afford them as a war of sorts broke out with the neighboring towns.

 

You may judge me vindictive – and I remain such – because I utilized this turmoil as an opportunity to pursue revenge on my countrymen who robbed me of my joy and very lust for living. My chance came when my king and his soldiers, whose spirits I had heretofore been so dedicated to bolstering, abducted some visiting maidens from a nearby land. They chose to spring their trap during a momentous festival in the name of the ocean god, and take them as wives. The brethren of these women saw fit to take up arms and liberate them so that they could return home to be brides to their men instead. So very chivalrous were these heroes from abroad, that I offered them unannounced entry into the citadel through the same city gates that served as grave marker for my own stolen maiden.

 

You've gone mute. Have you divined that my story has a tragic end? Tell me then, can it be a tragic end if I have yet to do so? My, your silence is hardly more bearable than the incessant chattering that Carmilla complained to me about. Musing on my anecdote or merely sleepwalking, I cannot decipher. Have you ever been awake for a day in your life, child?

 

Hmph. Well, those valiant warriors on whom I depended for vengeance could not discern why I would make such a proposal and demanded that I receive some form of compensation, lest my bargain be a ruse. These otherwise solemn men were adorned with rings and bracelets and all sorts of gaudy gems alongside their glittering armor. So, carried away by the blackest anticipation, I pointed carelessly to the riches adorning their shield arms, supposing that the quickest excuse for my duplicity would be base avarice.

 

We're almost there. I can tell by your breathing that this dank air is taxing you. Poor girl. Fear not, your death isn't bound to arrive through suffocation nor anything so mundane and incidental. And if I neglect to mention it later, allow me now to compliment your obedience throughout your, as it were, funeral procession.

 

_I'm_ insufferable?! Were that so, it would be quite queer for Carmilla to keep me company as consistently as she does, don't you think? Oh, but this won't do. I must make a point of imploring that girl to seduce a target who is sharp enough to treat her elders with proper deference, next time. She does make a bad habit of gravitating towards dullards out of indolence. Mayhap one of these centuries, we'll come across a witty, even-tempered young lady worth the trouble of unlacing her bodice and the exorbitant bloodbath thereafter.

 

You possess two ears but only one mouth, girl, so listen well, as you may enjoy this portion of my tale. I raised the gate, and the clever rescuers surged inside, surrounded me and proceeded to fling their heavy golden shields until they were piled atop my body; a grisly play on words. I was pressed against the earth with the force and clamor of a battle raging directly above. Scholars would have you believe that I perished beneath that behemoth structure of scarred metal or that my murderers threw me from a great height for sport, but it wasn't so. My crushed yet breathing body was recovered by my father's men once the invasion had been resolved. Spurred by his fury and abhorrence at my attempted betrayal of the stronghold he'd pledged to protect, my father ordered me whisked away to a stone eminence that towered above the city. All night his men spent carving out a disgraceful crypt for me at the base of that rock, and as in life, I followed my adored Alban girl deep into the ground. So deep, however, that they could not follow as rubble shifted beneath their sandals and my body tumbled into unexplored depths far below.

 

Hm, as flattered as I am by your interest and barely concealed frustration, I honestly couldn't tell you how I survived. Much of what I recall during the remaining moments of my mortal life is pain-hazed and incomprehensible, I'm afraid. This retelling has been pieced together by my own memories and significant extracts from accounts of strangers after-the-fact, of which there were many. I was strongly encouraged by self-preservation and urging from my... benefactor to abandon my homeland soon after this episode which I'm relating, as the story of my treachery spread rapidly and notoriously about the region and endures to this very day. Thankfully, my benefactor has been quite pleased with your rural homeland for its redoubt ever since.

 

My name? Was Carmilla exaggerating when she mentioned in passing that delightful library of yours? My darling girl does so enjoy the pleasure of hiding herself away in books. That must be yet another pursuit which the two of you don't share in common. Honestly, the education in Styria could do with vast improvement.

 

There's no telling how long I fell, only that had my flesh not already been in abject torment, the sensation of landing at the bottom of that rugged subterranean chamber would have surely convinced me to pray for death. As it was, I found myself in a shallow pool of water, doubtless tinged red with my own blood. I laid there, waiting calmly for oblivion to claim me, perhaps wailing at the feel of the warmth leaving my body in the dark. I wanted it to be over. Oh, how I ached for just a modicum of relief from such a nightmare, but I had no desire to reminisce on my lovely Alban girl. She didn't deserve to be enshrined in some godsforsaken hole twice over - not even within the tomb of my heart.

 

You're weeping! Surely not on my behalf! Calm yourself, I'm merely searching your face for the courageous little pissant who played at threatening my well-being for the sake of their fair, delicate, monstrous lover, Carmilla. Have you seen her, girl? Have you seen that fatuous child who believed that such an abomination as Carmilla, _as myself,_ could ever care for pabulum like you?!

 

Curse me again and I'll fling you over the cliff of the chasm. The pain that wracks your soul is as futile as your life and the collection of fruitless passions of which it is composed. You've seen the last of your father and your rustic home and the vague promise of a future. It is the fate of those who refuse to devour to be devoured in turn, girl, and always has been.

 

Now, if you'll hold your tongue, we're reaching the end of my _oh so tragic_   tale of woe. I'm afraid that I hovered perilously close to death at this point, and so my recollection is somewhat muddled. There was a light. A blazing glow that my debased reasoning took for the ineffable flame of Vesta herself. And illuminated by that light, I saw strange markings on the stone walls and bones gathered in the water nearby. Twitching bones, uncurling from a fetal position as if waking from a nap. Some grotesque monstrosity with emaciated joints and skin pulled so tight that it seemed transparent crouched on the floor and dragged itself to my side. It reminded me of a dead hound that my sisters and I had happened across when I was very young - skin grizzled and sunken; a feast for the worms. In all my years, I haven't forgotten my repulsion to that dried-out husk of a beast, nor the one that lunged at my throat in that pit and drained away the last spark of life left in me.

 

I'm disappointed. By now you should have at least amassed the wherewithal to be smug. I know that I would, were you victim of such a pitiful fate. Hmph.

 

Though relatively short, for most of my mortal life I stoked the fire of the light of a pantheon of false gods, and it wasn't until I died that I found a true one. It has been quite a transition to sustain that which I do now, but not as much as I would have imagined when I was a young girl torn from my family, first learning that all things require sacrifice. When I awoke, if resurrection can be called such a thing, my starved murderer was gone and that blinding light radiated and filled the cavern from beneath the water that surrounded me. And it spoke to me – softly, in the mother-tongue of my poor, stupid, dead Alban girl and told me so many things about the world. Ours, and others. Everything that one could ever need to know about making it out of this necropolis of a cosmos alive.

 

We've arrived, darling. It's like a sizzle in the marrow, isn't it? I'd like to remove the binding from around your eyes; hold still. This pilgrimage to my holiest of holies has all been in an effort to educate you, sweet girl. Enlightenment tends to masquerade as a bludgeoning, hateful aggressor, but if one merely opens their eyes... _Behold!_

 

_Ohohoho_ , run then, you fool! There's nowhere to go but down! Oh, dear, you've soiled your pristine gown. You may as well have still been blindfolded, so clumsy is your gait. Stand, you silly thing. Now what did I tell you about fearing for your life?

 

No. The madness is that this world buries its children alive under the weight of excremental philosophies piled atop by time itself and the men who record it generation after generation without fail. There is no deliverance from the shipwrecked state of the human soul; no escape; no harmony to achieve. Being ground to dust by the pressure of your ignorance is all that your kind has known since time immemorial. You were born in your own shit and will die in your own shit. Look at it, girl, and know that I tell you no lies. Had you any choice, you would still pick the same end.

 

_Salve, pater._ _Cenam ipsum mox incipit._ And so it recedes... for now.

 

Careful - step back this way. Away from the ledge. The pull is intoxicating, yes, but it's not time yet. Did it whisper anything to you, little one? Of what is and was and will be? Just me, then? Why, aren't _I_   something special?

 

Hmm, am I to assume by your trembling that my unmasked visage doesn't strike your fancy? I'm not one to indulge in vanity, but your distaste wounds me... Fortunately, my vigilant daughter lends no such merit to your judgment. She would have carried you across the threshold of whatever awaiting carriage tonight and shown you this face whether or not you found it pleasing. But then, my girl was never one to allow resistance to break her stride. The deceased village girls for instance, while quite enthusiastic when basking in her affection, as she's related to me, became rather cross with her once she revealed her predator smile. Alas, rarely for overlong.

 

Ah, no tears now, dear. I can empathize with what a shift of perspective this must be for you, yet you should value such a grand confidence. Most sacrifices complete their death march with senses dulled to the inevitability of their consumption. A bulk of them die mewling piteously to their craven deities. The remainder cry out only for _Carmilla_ , whose ears and heart alike are as stone and in any case does not answer by that name to anyone whom she holds dear. This journey was a gift. Do you understand?

 

Good. You have my word that our return trip will not be as near as harrowing as our descent. Bowing to your fate with such grace and humility has earned a climb to the surface unencumbered. Why, you may even look back, if you like, dear.

 

The blindfold? It won't be necessary. Simply a morbid amusement for the sake of my nostalgia.

 

_Ohoho,_ is that what I said? I can't imagine that where Carmilla chooses to go or what to do is of any concern to you now, after all that you've learned of her and your role in her nefarious scheme.

 

Oh, my. Such language. I could not have worded it better myself. But surely you must still feel some measure of-

 

I see. How _wonderful_. Then let us go inform my sweet girl of your change of heart, shall we?

 

*

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so, this was my first fic in this fandom so I have no idea what I'm doing but I hope that someone out there enjoyed it! I had a lot of feelings about the Dean and who she might be and why she does what she does and it snowballed and exploded out the side of my head and onto my word processor and now you've read it, oh god. Feel free to let me know what you thought in the comments, if you like.


End file.
